Month: June 2017

It would be easy to think of this hill behind my house as a natural feature, a thing the forces of glaciation, uplift, and wind and water erosion delivered here. But humans used what these forces had left to form this landscape. They made decisions according to the logic of…

At night, as the neighborhood shuts down and goes to sleep, the sound of movement sweeps in over this small backyard. It is the reverberation of exchange, the relentless force of society and commerce, and of evolution. But during the day, when most people work and most goods move, the…

Three rock yards. One sat on an old railroad switch where the owner, Chris, was out back burning a load of trash and wood. The second was just over the Kansas River in sight of my bluff. The third lie down in the Kansas River Valley. At the first, Chris…